In spite of commercial importance of polyethylene(PE), morphologies of melt crystallized PE have been rarely studied. Although, it was possible to observe polyethylene microstructure, they were based on the observation performed almost exclusively on thin films which were obtained either by casting samples between glass plates, or by microtoming the materials with transmission electron microscope(TEM). Despite the usefulness of TEM for detailed investigation of the polyethylene, it is not suitable for the structure characterization of the bulk samples, for examples, the characterization of a thick testpiece and commercial products of polyethylene itself. For such bulk specimen or thick sample, scanning electron microscope (SEM) is more useful, if the appropriate and reliable sample preparation method is applied.In this study, we introduce a chemical etching technique for the investigation of melt crystallized polyethylene microstructure by SEM. Especially in this work we studied the characteristic properties and shapes of polyethylene banded spherulite which come from the melt s.
Ring-banded spherulites in polylactide and its blends
